Power to and from the people

Knight-Ridder explores the devious ways in which Venezuela is trying to generate support in the United States:

"Even as Chavez attacks President Bush as his sworn nemesis, his government is running a strong campaign to curry favor with U.S. citizens through leftist grass-roots groups [Bolivarian circles], paid lobbyists and public relations operatives and offers of cheap fuel for America's poor.

"The Venezuelan leader is running a 'grass-roots foreign policy,' said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington based Center for Economic and Policy Research, a group that supports Chavez.

"'Obviously the government of the United States has not been very friendly and the Venezuelans figure they have a better chance at dealing directly with the people who don't have any particular reason not to like Venezuela,' he added."

My favorite part of the article, raising the now routine question of anonymous sources, was this:

"To Bush administration officials the names of organizations that back the Venezuelan president have a familiar ring to them.

"'The Venezuelans just got the Rolodex from Cuba,' said one senior State Department official who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue."

The article then goes on to mention Danny Glover and Rev. Lucius Walker as both supporters of Cuba and of Venezuela. Quelle surprise! If Hugo Chavez wanted to find out who in the U.S. to reach out to for support, he hardly needed to call up Fidel Castro. He could have called me or about a thousand other people who could have given him the complete list of people and groups likely to support him. Heck, he probably could have found the list on the web, starting with David Horowitz's list of "leftists I love to hate." The idea that this was somehow "sensitive" information that warranted that this State Department official be granted anonymity for his cheap slander (well, he or she thought it was slander, anyway) is preposterous. And typical.

Bill Clinton's Hypocrisies on Iraq

When Bill Clinton told a group of students in Dubai recently that the Iraq war had been a "big mistake", champions of the current White House occupant were quick to accuse him of hypocrisy. For once, they had a strong point.

To be clear, Clinton's criticism was confined to the conduct of the war, not its premises or ethics. "We never sent enough troops," the former president lamented, "and didn't have enough troops to control or seal the borders." At the moment, there are 160,000 US troops in Iraq; since 2003, half a million US soldiers have fought there. Would greater numbers have succeeded in doing anything other than further inflame an insurgency which is overwhelmingly conducted not by foreigners but by Iraqis, who have no need to slip over borders?

Clinton publicly backed the invasion of 2003--and he can't credibly claim he did so because (like the US public) he was misled by White House propaganda about Iraq's WMD and links to Al Qaeda. In fact, his administration laid the groundwork for the Iraq policy pursued by Bush.

Throughout his eight years in office, Clinton applied a ruthless sanctions regime that took the lives of at least half a million Iraqi children. He subjected Iraq (with British help) to the longest sustained bombing campaign since Vietnam, ostensibly to protect the no-fly zones established in 1991. In 1993, he ordered US warplanes to destroy Iraqi intelligence centers in retaliation for the attempted assassination of George Bush Sr. In 1998, he signed the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change official US policy, and did so explicitly on the basis of the threat posed by Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. In December of that year, US forces--with British assistance but without UN consent--mounted a ferocious four day aerial assault on Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The pretext was Iraq's refusal to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors, some of whom had been suborned by the Clinton administration to act as spies for US intellige

The Champ Meets the Chump

...Back then, Ali could level criticism about an ill-advised, unfair war: "Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No, I'm not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality.... If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people, they wouldn't have to draft me, I'd join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I'll go to jail, so what? We've been in jail for 400 years."

If Ali had said things like that today about our current war, it would have earned him not not a medal but a one-way trip to Gitmo.

The United States of Torture - Yet another sickening, shocking insight into the depths of evil to which the Bush regime can sink

Unfortunately it is not the first time that the Bush regime brings shame onto the good people of the United States of America and its Constitution, this bastion of freedom and democracy which is now relegated to a sad and apologetic synonym of the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib, the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay (what an example for Washington to give to Havana) and now, 175 people found in central Baghdad who resembled the cowering skeletal figures of Treblinka, Dachau or Belsen.

The hype is on, and this time the Bush regime is quick to claim that the raids were made by Iraqi and US troops, uncovering a shocking act of depravity unseen outside Hitler's concentration camps since 1945. What the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal failed to state was the fact that the torturers have been trained by Washington, that the CIA has set up torture chambers outside US soil in European prisons and that endemic torture is an integral part of the Bush regime.

What are you going to do now, Mr. Bush? "We used to have one reactionary dictator. Now we have tens of them springing up"

The Bush regime's policy in Iraq is an abject failure. Two years after the lies which gave a false pretext for the illegal invasion of Iraq, after 30,000 civilians have been murdered by US armed forces, after a hundred thousand people have lost their lives directly or indirectly because of this invasion, after Iraq's civilian infra-structures were selected as military targets, after the war crimes, the use of chemical weapons, the cases of torture, who can say that the policy was a success?

The Americans have lost control over Iraq

The US Forces have lost control of the situation. Eye witnesses have informed Pravda.Ru that the troops are rarely to be seen on the streets - they spend their time avoiding the population in huge convoys travelling back and forth on the outskirts of the cities and the ones who exert direct control are the gangs of armed men on practically every street corner.

Life much worse for the population

Global Eye - Body Politics and dictator George Bush

Four years ago, President George W. Bush quietly assumed dictatorial powers with a secret executive order granting himself the right to imprison anyone on earth indefinitely, without charges or trial or indictment or evidence, simply by declaring them an "enemy combatant," on his say-so alone. This week, the assemblage of bootlickers and bagmen that befoul the U.S. Senate voted to codify the core of this global autocracy under the pretense of curtailing it.

With great self-fluffing fanfare, the Senate passed two measures ostensibly designed to stem the flood of torture and tyranny issuing from the White House. But the twinned amendments to a military spending bill have the curious effect of canceling each other out: The anti-torture measure leaves Bush's tyranny intact, while the anti-tyranny measure will allow torture to continue unabated. This switcheroo, we are told by one of the scam's sponsors, "will re-establish moral high ground for the United States," The Washington Post reports.

PINOCHET FACES OFF WITH CHILE’S FORMER SECRET POLICE DIRECTOR

Manuel Contreras Blames Human Rights Abuses on Former Dictator

(Nov. 21, 2005) Chile’s former military dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet went face-to-face with Gen. Manuel Contreras, his own former director of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), in a joint testimony before Chilean authorities Friday morning. Victor Montiglio, the investigating judge in the Operation Colombo case, ordered the meeting between Contreras and Pinochet to help him resolve discrepancies in their respective accounts of the 1975 murder of 119 activists from the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR).

The meeting came as a surprise to Gen. Pinochet’s lawyers, who were notified on Friday morning that Pinochet was to appear before Judge Montiglio later that day. Pinochet’s counsel had hoped to avoid any direct confrontations with government investigators that might further establish Gen. Pinochet’s mental competence after state medical examiners declared him well enough to stand trial in early November (ST, Nov. 11).

Gen. Contreras and Gen. Pinochet have been accused of masterminding Operation Colombo, a joint operation between the military regimes of Chile, Argentina, and Brazil to cover-up the execution of 119 members of leftist opponents belonging to the MIR.

The Pentagon's plans to invade Venezuela

The United States has military contingency plans aimed against Venezuela, contrary to the UN Charter and the document guiding relations between members of the Organizations of American States (OAS).

A recent article in the Washington Post--which has not been refuted by the Pentagon--affirms that the Defense Department has prepared a plan to create a potential conflict with the South American nation, considered a threat to US strategic security by the White House.

William M. Arkin, in a column published November 2, said that Venezuela was identified as a "threat" in this year's Pentagon analysis and is foreseen to remain so for the period 2008-2013.

The fifth greatest oil exporter in the world and among the principal exporters of crude to the US, Venezuela is included on the list of states which pose the most danger to the US, sharing that position with North Korea and Iran, both considered by the Bush administration as nuclear threats.

According to the daily, the White House sees President Hugo Chavez as promoting revolutions in Latin America and accuses him of financing rebels in Colombia—where there are US military advisors are participating in a long-term domestic conflict.

Venezuela has suffered from the instability of the situation in Colombia, particularly that country's use of paramilitary forces paid for by the interests behind the failed coup attempt against the Venezuelan leader.

But when we look into what the Pentagon has planned in the land of Bolivar, we cannot forget the history that explains the hostile escalation of actions by the current Republican administration against the Bolivarian Revolution.

The participation of both the CIA and the former US military mission in Caracas in the short-lived coup attempt headed by Pedro Carmona is not conjectural journalism.

The government of George W. Bush never condemned the coup attempt, despite the US being a signatory of the Democratic Letter of the OAS. On the contrary, they welcomed, encouraged and participated in the coup.

Nor is it a coincidence that military interests behind the coup which are responsible for planting bombs at the Colombian and Spanish diplomatic missions in Caracas are protected in the US, despite their being terrorists.

In Boca Raton, Florida lives Venezuelan business executive Nelson Mezarhane--a banker and stockholder of the opposition daily El Globo. He is wanted by the Venezuelan justice system for having participated in the assassination of Judge Danilo Anderson, who was bringing to trial those individuals who were implicated in the April 2002 coup attempt.

We must also mention the fact that terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, another fugitive of Venezuelan law, is a "guest" of the US immigration service, which has refused to extradite Posada Carriles to Caracas.

With such information, it should not come as a surprise that the Pentagon has included Venezuela in its plans for future "preventive wars," despite President Chavez' prediction that if this were to ever occur, Latin America would explode in a ball of fire.

Looks like I may have been right about Rice

Back in July I speculated that Condoleezza Rice may be at the center of the Wilson/Plame leak. Now it seems like that speculation may, in fact, have been right on. While she is denying her role - the fact that she feels compelled to offer a public defense today should tell us something: namely, the sharks are circling around her and her former deputy, Stephen Hadley.

If the Times of London today is right and Hadley was Woodward's direct source, that raises a very important question: Was Hadley ordered to leak Plame's name to the press by his boss at the time, Condi Rice? In other words, Rice may not have been Woodward's direct source as she claims - but that doesn't mean she didn't give the order. Remember, as I wrote back in July, Wilson's New York Times op-ed was a direct indictment of Rice, meaning she had a personal motive. And it would be extremely hard to imagine Hadley acting alone with such a coordinated hit job on a CIA officer...Stay tuned.

Bush World v. The Real World: Deconstructing Progress in Iraq

Do you, like me, have trouble distinguishing the truth between the various statements administration officials make regarding the status of the war in Iraq, and information published or broadcast elsewhere in the media or on the Web? It makes it difficult to to know if what you're reading is the truth, or merely a facile canard. Who to believe: Bush and his boyos, or those who dispute the Bush spin on Iraq? Often, many of us are forced to choose sides. Either we join the True Patriots who believe every word that is uttered (for approbation or anonymously) by the Bush administration, or we find ourselves in the camp of the Surrender Monkeys, who think Bush and all his followers have a wee bit of a problem with the virtue of honesty.

The problem, however, may be merely a matter of perspective. What we have here may not be a question of truth or falsehood , but instead more the result of the narrative we choose to construct or accept from the information available to us. How one interprets information is often more critical than the information itself. I know, another French Intellectual argument, but Republicans do seem open to them these days. See, for example, the arguments employed by defenders of the theory of Intelligent Design. For lack of better labels, I've chosen to call the Bush administration narrative "Bush World" and the narrative of all of us surrender monkeys the "Real World." I know some conservatives might dislike that particular nomenclature for the narrative I happen to espouse, but hey – if you want to play postmodernist games about truth, and conservatives seem all too willing lately to employ this philosophical approach when making (up) their own arguments (cf. Jonah Goldberg) you have to accept that sometimes your opponents may get in first with their own “framing” devices rather than yours.

So with that in mind, let’s examine these two "world narratives" and see if we can get a better understanding of where the differences between them arise in the case of, say . . . Progress in Iraq?

Germans: Bush misused data to justify Iraq war

Informant's handlers say they repeatedly warned of unreliability.
By Bob Drogin and John Goetz
Special to The Morning Call

BERLIN | -- The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush Aadministration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims before the Iraq war.

Five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with the Los Angeles Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.

According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's claims in his pre-war presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.

Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly second-hand and impossible to confirm.

"This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said."

Yosfiya: The 21st Century Nazis Are Here

Those who follow the American occupation of Iraq news may be familiar with a term used in media almost two years ago: The Triangle of Death, an area south of Baghdad, which constitutes three relatively small towns; Yosfiya, Mahmoodiya and Latifiya. Of course it has nothing to do with death; on the contrary it is situated in one of the greenest, most beautiful and peaceful areas of Iraq, full of fruit orchards, vegetable farms where the Tigris and the Euphrates and many smaller canals flow calmly through the rural areas and hundreds of small villages. It also used to be one of the most important industrial areas in central Iraq, especially textiles. But it is branded Triangle of Death by the American troops now, because they face the largest number of attacks on the southern highway there.

The population is a mixture of Shiite and Sunni Arab tribes, as almost everywhere else in Iraq. It never happened in history that this area witnessed any sectarian conflict whatsoever. Directly after the occupation, and through 2004, news of American raids, arrests and big military operations were regular there. This year however, a new (dimension) was added, horrible stories of arrests, torture, and mass killing news were coming out, not only by the American troops, but also by the Iraqi police and Army units. These news rarely, almost never, find their way into the mainstream media, neither Iraqi nor international.

From Vietnam to Iraq: Sen. George McGovern Discusses the Lies of War from the Gulf of Tonkin to Iraq's WMDs

The 1972 presidential candidate looks back at how the U.S. entered the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. We also play an excerpt from the new documentary "One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern." [includes rush transcript]
In the past few weeks new information has been revealed about the U.S government's deceptions during the Vietnam War. Early this month new evidence emerged about the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 that precipitated the escalation of the Vietnam War. A National Security Agency historian determined that officers at the agency knowingly falsified intelligence in order to make it look as if North Vietnam had attacked U.S. destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf. Following the alleged attack, President Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnamese targets and used the event to persuade Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which led to the escalation of the war.
And just last week, documents were released from the National Archives that gave fresh insight into the Nixon administration's efforts to deceive the public over its 1970 attack on Cambodia. The over 50,000 pages of declassified material include records of then-President Richard Nixon meeting with aides at a time Americans were told US forces in Cambodia were there to support South Vietnamese. Nixon told aides: "That is what we will say publicly. But now, let's talk about what we will actually do."

George McGovern was the Democratic presidential candidate in the 1972 race against Richard Nixon. McGovern was one of the leading critics of the Vietnam war in Washington. A new film that looks at his life opened in Los Angeles this past weekend. It's called "One Bright and Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern." It was produced and directed by Stephen Vittoria. I was asked to narrate it.

Sen. George McGovern, ran for president in 1972 against Richard Nixon. He served in the Senate from 1962 to 1980.

The Power of Nightmares (THIS IS A MUST WATCH DOCUMENTARY )

The Power of Nightmares -

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.

THIS IS A MUST WATCH DOCUMENTARY

Each program is 58 minutes long - - Real Video - If you only have time to watch one program then please watch part III

Part I http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11091.htm

Part II http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11092.htm

Part III http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11093.htm

===

The Left-Progressive movement is on the march around the world.

November 21, 2005 -- The Left-Progressive movement is on the march around the world. The neo-cons and their assorted allies are on the run. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon saw the writing on the wall. He announced he is quitting the Likud Party, which he helped to create. That decision will fracture the Israeli right and leave rudderless the neo-cons in Washington, London, Rome, Canberra, and other capitals.

In another dramatic development, Israel's Labor Party dumped the pedantic Shimon Peres and replaced him with social democratic labor union firebrand Amir Peretz, a decision welcomed in Damascus, Cairo, and elsewhere in the Arab world. Peretz is an Arabic-speaking native of Morocco and is on very good terms with Israel's one million-strong Arab community, especially the Arab working class. He says he will scrap the ridiculous pro-Likud American "Road Map" and negotiate directly with the Palestinian Authority. The Likud, which will now be headed by neo-con radical Binyamin Netanyahu, will drift even further to the right and irrelevancy. Look for Peretz to squeeze the Russian-Ukrainian-Israel Mafia of wealthy Russian and other former Soviet gangsters who have seized control of Israel through their alliance with the corrupt Likud Party.

Sharon obviously read the tea leaves and is jumping a sinking corrupt right wing ship dominated by gangsters and religious fanatics (sounds a lot like the Bush administration). Sharon is forming his own "centrist" political party with the ousted Shimon Peres, deeply fracturing the Israeli Right and consolidating the left around Peretz's Labor Party.

The purge of Peres from Labor is being echoed in the U.S. Democratic Party, where Rep. Jack Murtha's anti-war speech last week is putting the spotlight on leading Democrats who oppose a withdrawal from Iraq -- namely, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joe Lieberman and Representatives Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer. All are "neo con lite" and quikcly becoming irrelevant as the Democratic Party finds its anti-war footing thanks to Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold, and others.

In Sri Lanka, leftist Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse won the presidency on a platform of nationalization of the economy, a direct slap in the face of the World Bank of Paul Wolfowitz, which abhors state control of any portion of any national economy. His defeated opponent was a free market proponent. Sri Lanka now joins neighboring India (and its ruling Congress Party) in an emerging bloc of leftist governments in South Asia. Seven opposition parties have held talks with Communist rebels in Nepal with a view that Nepal may soon relegate its fascist pro-American King to the ash heap of history.

In Europe, British Prime Minister Tony Blair faces a rebellion in his own Labor Party and possible impeachment over the Iraq war. France is turning against the right-wing neo-con Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and the Socialists, Communists, and Greens remain strong at the regional and municipal levels. Italy's neo-fascist Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is on the electoral ropes from Italy's leftist coalition, including the Communists. In Norway, the Socialists beat a conservative Prime Minister with ties to the Christian Right in the United States.

It is Latin America that is leading the global progressive resurgence. Michelle Bachelet, tortured by the U.S.-supported Pinochet regime is the front runner to become the next President of Chile. After Pinochet's coup and after being tortured, she moved to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) to rebuild the Chilean Socialist Party. Bachelet is 24 percentage points ahead of her conservative and global neocon-backed rival. In next year's Mexican presidential election, former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is the front runner to succeed conservative Vicente Fox. The election is scheduled for next July 2. Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is as strong as ever and continues to berate Bush, calling him "Mr. Danger." Chavez and a phalanx of Latin American leaders of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil blocked Bush's Free Trade Area of the Americas pro-corporate contrivance at the recent Americas summit in Argentina. In Bolivia, coca growers' union leader Evo Morales leads in polls for the Dec. 18 presidential election. He will reverse privatization and begin a policy of state control of the energy industry. In Nicaragua, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega stands a good chance of becoming the country's president after elections next year.

The signs are unmistakable that the progressive left is on the march throughout the United States and around the world. Meanwhile, Bush couldn't make it out of a door in Beijing.

THE GUATEMALAN POLICE ARCHIVES

Washington D.C., November 21, 2005 - The National Security Archive has posted a slide show of photographs documenting the stunning discovery of police records in Guatemala, as reported in the New York Times today. The photos are accompanied by a description of the police files by the Archive's Guatemala Project Director Kate Doyle, who first visited them in early August.

The discovery was made in July, when human rights investigators found by accident an enormous cache of abandoned files from Guatemala's brutal former National Police forces, documents that may contain information about the fates of hundreds of disappeared citizens. It is an extraordinary development in a country that suffered a savage civil conflict from 1960-1996, resulting in more civilian deaths and disappearances than any other nation in the western hemisphere; according to a United Nations-sponsored truth commission, more than 90 percent of those atrocities were committed by government security forces.

"Guatemalans have never stopped looking for true history and hard evidence about the state's hand in massive human rights atrocities," notes Kate Doyle. "The police files promise a wealth of new information about events that have been distorted for decades by government lies and a silence imposed by violence. It is a thrilling discovery."

Since the discovery, the National Security Archive has been working with Guatemala's Human Rights Ombudsman, non-governmental human rights organizations and other civil society groups to rescue the documents and design a strategy for their long-term protection, recovery and archival restoration so that they may be opened to the public. This historical salvage mission is intended to secure these records of repression, restore them to readable form, and organize them into what promises to be the largest and most revealing collection of 'dirty war' documentation ever unearthed in Latin America.

http://www.nsarchive.org
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB170/index.htm

"'Summit of the Americas Fails to Establish Agreement on F.T.A.A."

Initiated by U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1994, the Summit of the Americas (S.O.A.), which brings together the leaders of the 34 members of the Organization of American States (O.A.S.) every five years, was conceived as a vehicle for promoting Washington's plan for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (F.T.A.A.) that would extend the North American Free Trade Agreement (N.A.F.T.A.) to the entire western hemisphere according to the principles of the "Washington Consensus" -- fiscal discipline, anti-inflation policies, privatization of state enterprises, reduction of state intervention in the economy and of state expenditures, deregulation of the private sector, and receptivity to foreign investment. The F.T.A.A. was meant to be the capstone of the reforms promoted by the Consensus, opening up the economies of the hemisphere to free trade in goods and services.

At its inception, participants in the S.O.A. endorsed the concept of the F.T.A.A. and began to reform their economies along the lines of the Consensus, partly because of their interest in attracting foreign investment and partly because they were dependent on foreign lenders, particularly the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.), which required that the reforms be undertaken.

Over the past decade, the Consensus has broken down as reform failed to produce sufficient economic growth to raise the living standards of the 50 percent of Latin America's population who live in poverty, and pressures from below grew for governments to abandon neo-liberal policies and increase social spending.

The first serious rupture came in 1998, when Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela and started to institute his "Bolivarian Revolution" that had as one of its essential elements the rejection of the F.T.A.A. in favor of a Latin American economic community based on cooperation to achieve a social model of development. [See: "Venezuela's Hugo Chavez Makes His Bid for a Bolivarian Revolution"]

An American Tipping Point? Losing the Fear Factor - How The Bush Administration Got Spooked

It's finally Wizard of Oz time in America. You know -- that moment when the curtains are pulled back, the fearsome-looking wizard wreathed in all that billowing smoke turns out to be some pitiful little guy, and everybody looks around sheepishly, wondering why they acted as they did for so long.

ALCA afeta relações entre países

A ingerência dos interesses dos Estados Unidos na América Latina está provocando, agora, conflitos diplomáticos entre países da região. Nos últimos dias, os presidentes venezuelano, Hugo Chávez, e mexicano, Vicente Fox, têm trocado declarações sobre suas posições opostas a respeito da Área de Livre Comércio das Américas (ALCA), liderada pelos EUA.

A situação se agravou quando o líder venezuelano acusou o mexicano de ser um "cachorro do império" e "entreguista aos EUA".

Chávez divulgou vídeos do confronto privado dos presidentes sobre a ALCA, na quarta cúpula, realizada em Mar del Plata, Argentina, neste mês, e estimou que demonstram que os Estados Unidos perderam esse debate.

"Cavalheiro, não foi incluída no documento a sua proposta; foi derrotado, cavalheiro; nocaute, gentleman, nocaute, sir", disse Chávez, referindo-se ao presidente estadunidense, George W. Bush, após transmitir um discurso deste em seu programa dominical rádio-televisionado, Alô Presidente.

PT: pensar para frente por Leonardo Boff

Não há consciência nos políticos da gravidade da situação que exige políticas globais que dêem centralidade à Terra. Neste quadro, o Brasil ocupa um lugar singular, possuindo a maior biodiversidade do planeta. Esses temas devem fazer parte da agenda de reconstrução do PT.

O PT introduziu novidades na política brasileira como a democracia interna (que não conseguiu evitar desvios do grupo dirigente), o orçamento participativo, a maneira nova de organizar o mandato dos eleitos em orgânica relação com as bases. E inegavelmente o acento (embora ainda insuficiente) nas questões sociais numa perspectiva emancipatória.